I know this is nominally a duplicate question, but I've read the other questions and haven't been able to fix my problem after many hours and attempts, so please don't delete it. Also, it seems like answers to other questions are dependent on certain situations. My situation being different from the others I found represented, here's my question.

Recently, I had Ubuntu 12.04 installed with Wubi, and it ran ok, though slowly and with occasional hangs. So I partitioned the drive and installed 12.04 in its own partition.

Now when I start it, I am stuck using 2D. I believe this is an NVIDIA bug.

UPDATE:
Per comment, installed Bumblebee.
Am rebooting now to see if that helped.
Finished rebooting - no change.

UPDATE:
@Constantin: BIOS lists two options: "Switchable" & "Integrated". Tried them both, no go. I tried the directions you linked to - there is no change. nvidia-xconfig and nvidia-settings: done, done, and redone. No change.
Also worth noting I've since reverted all changes made following the instructions at that link.

3 Answers
3

Solution found! Seemingly by random chance, once after of the many
reboots last night, I got Unity 3D and additional drivers now listed
the two NVIDIA drivers. Then I was stupid enough to try and install
those drivers - broke it.

However, that gave me hope, and a solution was found. I didn't get the
NVIDIA drivers working, but I think I have working Nouveau drivers.
Either way, Unity 3D is working perfectly.

Steps I took:

Yet another clean re-install.

Installed all the updates.

Opened terminal, ran apt-get purge nvidia-settings nvidia-current.

Reboot

And that got me Unity 3D and, I infer, working graphics drivers. Just in time too.

Hey, thanks for the guidance. :D I wasn't sure if I should have put it in the question itself or as an answer or both. Guess I have my answer now. Can I accept my own answer? Going to try.
–
DonJun 23 '12 at 10:23

If all else fails, uninstall the drivers you used ... I THINK, you'll have to google it, that it's sudo sh NVIDIA_[DRIVER BINARY FILE].sh --uninstall something along those lines, then install the PPA, just google "12.04 nvidia driver"